A professional photographer and a Zen teacher team with the class to explore the unknown.

Let’s experiment with what it means to use the visual world as a way of practicing the Zen principles of Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Loving Action. So called “Zen photographers” are often imagined as moving slowly, contemplatively through time and space but, as with sitting meditation, time and space can become elastic. Such a photographer might look to the outsider more like a dancer than a stone statue!

Hozan Alan Senauke is vice-abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, where he has been living for 25 years. He is founder of Clear View Project, engaged Buddhist action for social change and relief. Alan is a writer, a well-known performer of American traditional music, and is often seen behind a camera. His latest book is The Bodhisattva’s Embrace: Dispatches from Engaged Buddhism’s Front Lines.

Peter Cunningham is a professional photographer based on two islands, Manhattan and Grand Manan in Canada; his clients include singers, actors, teachers, chefs, playwrights, athletes, accountants, fishermen, politicians, and clowns. It is a lifelong project of Peter's to document the migration of Zen Buddhist practice from Japan to the West, his recent book on the subject with writer Peter Matthiessen is Are We There Yet? A Zen Journey through Space and Time.